New Frontiers In Hipster Christianity

Pastor Carl Lentz of the New York City outpost of Hillsong, the international megachurch movement, went on The View yesterday. Introducing him as a “buff hipster,” one of the hosts asked him straightaway what his church teaches on abortion and homosexuality. You can see the entire clip here. He dodged the homosexuality question entirely, and on abortion … well, watch above.

Pastor Carl doesn’t like that he’s considered a bigot simply because he doesn’t share the views you tend to find in blue-state big cities—that you can be gay, you can abort your fetus, you can do whatever you’d like with your body, really. He’s happy to discuss about it, but he doesn’t like being challenged on this by people who don’t believe in the God of the Bible, because how could they possibly understand why he’s reached these conclusions if you’re not starting from the same place? He says that if he could just show a person how to walk with Jesus, really walk with him every day, it would be easy to resist the temptation of loving someone of your own gender. But, Carl begs me, don’t miss the point: It’s important to him that we know that everyone is welcome at his church—that homosexuality isn’t a different kind of sin to him than, say, tithing at 9 percent instead of 10 percent, or gossiping or telling a lie. Everyone should feel welcome at Hillsong.

And everyone is, but with footnotes. Earlier in the year it came out that a male leader of the New York choir was in a committed Christian relationship with a male singer in the choir. Whether or not this was an open secret within the church is not completely clear, but when it came out publicly, Joel’s father, Pastor Brian, was forced to clarify out loud that, yes, the church is against two men in a relationship.

“These two men in particular are amazing human beings,” Carl continued, and he starts to cry at this, at how painful this was for everyone involved. …

So make no mistake: He believes being gay, or getting an abortion, is a sin, and he believes Jesus wouldn’t disagree. But more than any of that, he only believes those are the headlines of your life. They are not your story. Your sin is not the biggest part of you, no matter how much it might feel that way.

Here, from that GQ profile, are a couple of descriptions of Pastor Carl’s church:

I was witnessing the logical conclusion of an evolutionary convergence between coolness and Christianity that began at the dawn of the millennium, when progressive-minded Christians, terrified of a faithless future, desperately rended their garments and replaced them with skinny jeans and flannel shirts and piercings in the cartilage of their ears, in a very ostentatious effort to be more modern and more relatable. Which is why, today, you can find ironically bespectacled evangelicals in Seattle and graphic designers soliciting tithes with hand-drawn Helvetica flyers in San Diego. You can walk into mega-churches all over the country where the pastor will slap on a pair of leather pants and drop the F-bomb BOOM how do you like me now??

But doesn’t it always feel like they’re trying too hard? Those guys make me think of Starman, when Jeff Bridges is trying to say “Yo, what’s up?” to Karen Allen but he says “I send greetings” instead.

The book on Hillsong, however—the other book, lowercase b—is that they’re the real article: the world’s first genuinely cool church. “The music! The lights! The crowds!” begins an incredulous woman narrating a CNN segment on Hillsong NYC in smarmy CNNese. “It looks like a rock concert. And the lines around the block are enough to make any nightclub envious.” The chyron reads “Hipster preacher smashes stereotypes.” They call Pastor Carl a hipster—ABC actually said “hipster heartthrob”—and Carl says he doesn’t know what that means, and he wears a motorcycle jacket when he says this.

More:

Before the service had begun that day, a woman in her early twenties who was saving the entire row for latecomer friends told me she had been coming to Hillsong for two years, that every week she brings more and more friends because where else in New York can you find such a spiritual place? She used to go to a Greek Orthodox church—every single person I met at Hillsong was a churchgoer somewhere else before he or she began going to church at Hillsong—but it was long and boring there and she was doing it out of family obligation. I told her I could relate. She told me she liked that the pastors here sounded like her. “And they encourage me to be better.” I asked her what that meant, and she told me that I had to understand that it wasn’t easy out there. That her job was stressful and that holding these seats for her friends, who are always late, was stressful. When her gang showed up, three songs in, five of them were wearing the hat.

“The Hat” is a particular kind of millinery favored by Pastor Joel, who leads the church with Pastor Carl. The story says a whole lot of people at this cool church follow Pastor Joel’s fashion lead. Anyway, she left Orthodoxy to worship at a church which was entertaining and the pastor looked like her and offered her a therapeutic experience, because life in the big city requires things like saving seats for one’s friends, and that’s just so stressful.

Huh. Here’s stressful, sister. If hipster church isn’t preparing you to be a hero like that man, you are wasting your time.

Denny Burk observes that on The View, when Pastor Carl was asked about racism, he spoke at length to condemn it in no uncertain terms. Burk nails him:

The pastor is willing to speak with moral clarity about racism. He condemns it outright and is congratulated by the hosts for doing so. But when asked for the same kind of moral clarity about abortion and homosexuality, he backs down. Why? Clearly the hosts approve his condemnation of racism but would not have approved a condemnation of abortion or homosexuality. A pastor must never stick his finger to the wind to determine when and where to offer moral clarity. No, he must be morally serious at all times and has no right to pick and choose when he’ll speak the truth and when he won’t. If he is God’s man, then he must always be completely truthful.

But that won’t get you invited on The View to sell your book. Or at least won’t get you invited back. And it might cause your celebrity posse (Justin Bieber et alia) to leave you behind. This Nigerian Christian pro-life activist is unsparing:

Progressive litmus test passed, for now. But how many back in his congregation are concerned about his responses? Certainly some people are if this is the official (and clearly Scriptural) position of the congregation.

This will backfire. How can it not? When you try to please everyone on this sort of issue, you end up alienating all of them, it’s not strong enough for Christians that hold to Scripture and not permissive enough for mainstream cultural attitudes. Is this not another Rob Bell, or name the hip Christian pastor that is “engaging the culture,” as they say. I suspect he will end up another tragic figure that stood for nothing and yet lost everything.

When I was in my late teens I admired the occasional Presbyterian service that incorporated The Moody Blues or Janis Ian into a worship service. I don’t recall those services with any lack of fondness or sense of spiritual error. But these days, I’ve developed an appreciation for the hymns of Isaac Watt, even though he was more doctrinally orthodox than will ever make sense to me.

“every single person I met at Hillsong was a churchgoer somewhere else before he or she began going to church at Hillsong”

Doesn’t this rather defeat the purpose? What Pastor Carl has got, in other words, is a building full of church shoppers. Nothing wrong with that, but I’d have to say no new ground broken here. Move along, nothing to see folks…

I really, really don’t understand this type of thinking. Personally I am as socially liberal as they come, I support gay marriage, a woman’s right to have an abortion, and a whole raft of other things many here object to. But I certainly don’t try to make those beliefs comport with the Bible. It amazes me the lengths some people will go thru to try and resolve their cognitive dissonance. But fundamentally it is just not possible to honestly twist the Bible to support some positions.

Whereas there is much to be criticized about the man’s therapeutic style, he can’t necessarily be blamed for dodging the questions. It was Redeemer Presbyterian and Tim Keller’s strategy to pay down some of Christianity’s harder sexual teachings in order that they might get a hearing. The reasoning is that if Christ is risen, you must take him seriously, but if he’s not, then it doesn’t matter. So that’s where one should start. And I don’t think you could accuse Redeemer or the PCA of unorthodoxy on these matters.

[NFR: But if you are asked point-blank on national TV where your church stands on these issues, seems to me you have a moral obligation to be honest. — RD]

What happens when that conversation actually happens, though? If a young lady comes to his church, puts on the hat and trusts this guy, and he convinces her that an abortion is truly sinful and she does not have that abortion, his position WORKS.

If, on the other hand, he keeps yammering along and bails on the conversation, or keeps answering that “God loves everybody,” then it’s a sham.

On abortion: “Before I start picking and choosing what I think is sin in your life, I’d like to know your name”

On race: “of course this is an issue, of course this is wrong. Of course you can’t look at Charlottesville and say, “hey let’s slow down, there are good people on all sides.”

The galling thing here isn’t that Pastor Carl is a relativist or isn’t. Or that he is willing to speak unequivocally or isn’t.
It is that he does either selectively and completely contradictorily in the span of two minutes because he knows when he will get applause.

This is the very description of “cozying up” that he so explicitly rejects at the end of the segment.

It’s not his comments but his costume that put him in question. Like the now fallen Tullian T who was too tanned and pretty for words (and who scammed for steroids at his local gym), this guy’s entire look says he is worldly. Is he? Impossible to tell, but appearance matters for a reason.

“To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.”

[NFR: The link after the passage in which the girl complained of being “stressed” takes you to a biography of Polycarp. — RD]

Thanks. I have used the Martyrdom of Polycarp in more than one of the courses I teach, over the years. The other great martyrdom account I have used is the “Acts of Pionius the Presbyter,” situated in Smyrna 95 years after the martyrdom of Polycarp there. It is an account whose historical authenticity as an “on the spot account” Robin Lane Fox brilliantly vindicates in his in his great and readable book, *Pagans and Christians* (1987). Unlike Polycarp, Pionius’s Bishop of Smyrna apostatized in the face of persecution, a thing which received a brief mention in Pionius’ account.

[NFR: But if you are asked point-blank on national TV where your church stands on these issues, seems to me you have a moral obligation to be honest. — RD]

I’ve always thought that if I ran for office or became a public figure, I’d have to learn how to deal with that sort of thing in a savvy way. Often I conclude that maybe Christians just aren’t cut out to be famous, and maybe that’s okay.

But I certainly don’t think it’s out of line to refuse to sidestep the trap questions. I’m reminded of one of Alan Jacobs’ recent posts where he notes that he doesn’t have to pick one of The Options to take A Stand on The Issues. It’s a different context, but it speaks to the idea that we don’t need to operate on the world’s terms.

Or, if we want to look at Jesus, what do we make of him in John 8:2-6? Is he muddying the waters and not providing clarity about the nature of Roman law vs Jewish law (or however you want to characterize the question)?

I might be stretching that a bit too thin, but the point is the question was meant as a trap, and Jesus was able to provide an answer without falling into it.

Abortion and same-sex questions are meant to be gotcha, tribe-defining questions. Say the right thing and we’ll listen, say the wrong thing and we’ll boo you. This is a great opportunity for a pastor to sidestep the issue and note that both questions are rooted in common threads of sexual sin, and that most humans on the planet are guilty of those.

So, not defending this guy or what he said, but noting that I don’t think he’s under any obligation to play the game on The View‘s terms.

On abortion, “People have to live with their own convictions,” he says. Wow.

Conservative Christianity has been comprehensively routed. I mean, of course this guy isn’t going to criticize gay marriage or abortion. He undoubtedly thinks there’s nothing wrong with being gay, and that an early-term abortion, while maybe wrong in some technical sense, is at worst a kind of spiritual misdemeanor. That’s what most modern people think.

That’s not going to change. Only Americans even bother arguing about this stuff anymore.

Conservative American Christians will say, but nonetheless we’re upholding the true biblical witness. Well, good luck with that. The Catholic Church, for centuries, prayed for the conversion of the Jews. Now it teaches that there’s nothing really wrong with being Jewish; in fact, Jews were the first recipients of God’s promise, blah blah blah. The Church will eventually, and similarly, decide that there’s nothing really wrong with being gay. Complicated theological language will be tossed up to justify and/or disguise this major shift, but it will happens nonetheless. Pretty soon too, probably.

While there is value in looking at the breadth of Christianity and discussing our course forward, why and b what authority are we judging who can be a christian and how? what does that say about us?. Jesus could not have been clearer. Judge not and be not judged. Or as St Paul says, For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

As to the sincerity of Pastor Carl’s congregation, how many in YOUR congregation are truly christian. Isnt it a good thing that a church in New York City, (aka babylon) is full on sunday?

[NFR: This comment indicates zero familiarity with the history of Christianity. So does the second paragraph, come to think of it. — RD]

I wish he had answered the question more directly, but let’s not be too harsh toward him. As another commentator said, he isn’t required to play the game on the View’s terms. They were trying to trap him. Ideally, he would have the courage to step into their trap.

The bigger problem is with “hipster” Christianity, and I think it leads to these milquetoast answers. He is obviously trying to maintain his identity as a “cool guy” and the hosts love that – because they think that they may have found a “cool” evangelical. The apostle Paul says that the gospel is a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the Greeks. He was too afraid to be a stumbling block or a fool, so he was less-than-honest (I don’t think he lied, exactly), and he fell short of bearing witness to the Good News.

Calvin said that the human mind is a factory for idols. This guy’s idol is being the cool Christian who gets along with the famous and wealthy in NYC. Pray that this idol will be destroyed.

I think Carl Lentz is a fellow Christ follower. They praise Jesus every service. They reflect on his love for us. And pray for peace and joy in this world of trouble. I know you think seeker churches are over-represented. But just as you were a seeker once, there needs to be a “top of the funnel” church to welcome the wanderers off the streets of New york. And like you when you were young, many of them will mature into their faith and practice. God bless the work that Carl Lentz is doing as He blesses your work Rod.

Every time I see a clip from The View, it strikes me as incredibly stultifying.
“Where’s the line when you infringe upon the separation of Church and State?”
The answer to that is “That’s a stupid question. If the Pope, Billy Graham and the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem got together and, from some shared animus, assassinated a President, they would not violate the First Amendment. The Church cannot violate the constitution. Only the government can violate the constitution. You can look that up.”

In fairness, I have noticed in recent months that the SBC (considered a very conservative denomination) is following suit in how it handles certain sins. Racism condemned quickly and in no uncertain terms. Other hot-button topics are spoken about with nuance and with regard to the importance of listening to and walking alongside people as they struggle through their journey. It is odd.

The simple fact behind all of it is that almost everyone goes along with the tide and trends.

PS
I don’t relate at all to worship designed to be an entertainment spectacle. In recent years it has become harder and harder to even describe it. I think, in part, this is because I don’t really think of it anymore as being worship.

“The Catholic Church, for centuries, prayed for the conversion of the Jews. Now it teaches that there’s nothing really wrong with being Jewish; in fact, Jews were the first recipients of God’s promise, blah blah blah. The Church will eventually, and similarly, decide that there’s nothing really wrong with being gay. Complicated theological language will be tossed up to justify and/or disguise this major shift, but it will happens nonetheless.”

Can’t tell if this “Jefferson Smith” cat is a newbie to all this stuff, or one of our old prog friends posting under a new handle.

If the former, he’s rehashing stuff that’s been talked about on here forever, and simply hasn’t done his homework. If the latter, then basically he’s a troll, because he already knows the answers that will be given to these “challenges.”

In any case, why do the conservatives here have to answer the same questions over and over, as if we’ve never heard them before? It seems to me that there’s a bit of bad faith arguing going on.

If the former, he’s rehashing stuff that’s been talked about on here forever…..

Yes, apparently I’ve missed these (no doubt) very sophisticated explanations you’ve already provided. If you don’t consider it a complete waste of time, you’re welcome to try to bring me up to speed.

Pastor Carl is clearly signaling an incipient climbdown on abortion and gay marriage. He seems to come close to saying that these are matters of individual conscience, not authoritative teaching. I’m aware that he’s not Catholic, but the Catholic Church — despite its conservatism and its claims to safeguard a 2,000-year tradition — has climbed down on an even bigger question, arguably the biggest of all: does rejecting the divinity and Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth alienate you from God? Or can it be part of an alternative and equally worthy spiritual path — perhaps, even, dare we say, a matter of individual conscience?

Put these two data points together, and it seems clear to me where we’re headed: ways will be found to relativize and soften the old teachings. Pastor Carl is showing how it’s done, and the Catholic Church has already shown that there’s no issue that ultimately can’t be compromised in this way. Gay marriage and even abortion are obviously lesser issues than the ones alluded to in John 14:6.

Again, you’re welcome to point out the errors in this analysis to a poor soul like me who doesn’t do his homework. I’m guessing that if I’m confused on these matters, then others are too. But, no obligation if you consider it a waste of time.

Here’s the thing: Pastor Carl and his church are officially against same-sex relationships and abortion.

Perhaps we need to stop using words like “against.” Pastor Carl’s church believes that marriage is a specific bond between a man and a woman, that a same-sex couple does not fit the definition or serve the divine purpose of marriage, that men, and women, would in the long term and the larger sense be happier and spiritually healthier if they set aside their hormonal impulses… which leaves room for ministering to people who are struggling with those questions and at present find themselves committed to a same-sex relationship that at least is rewarding to them in a way that has some parallels to what heterosexual couples find in their marriages?

“Yes, apparently I’ve missed these (no doubt) very sophisticated explanations you’ve already provided. If you don’t consider it a complete waste of time, you’re welcome to try to bring me up to speed.”

Apologies, but there was at least one frequent former poster here that sounded very much like you, but who would jump from thread to thread asking the same questions even after he’d been answered elsewhere. After a time it was very obvious that it was bad-faith arguing. Not sure if he/she left of his/her own volition or was banned.

Anyways, these arguments that I mention have appeared here on multiple threads. The one called “Burnt by the Sol” is probably as good a place to start as any.